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Review

Lisbee Stainton Band / Eleanor McEvoy

Lisbee Stainton Band / Eleanor McEvoy, The Courtyard Arts Centre, Hereford, 12/11/2013.

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by Ian Mann

November 14, 2013

/ LIVE

Ian Mann enjoys performances by Eleanor McEvoy and the Lisbee Stainton band and also takes a look at Lisbee's new album "Word Games".

Lisbee Stainton Band / Eleanor McEvoy, The Courtyard Arts Centre, Hereford, 12/11/2013.

2013 has been a memorable year for twenty five year old singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Lisbee Stainton. It’s a period that has seen her headlining two UK tours and consolidating her position as an increasingly key member of folk/rock superstar Seth Lakeman’s touring band. A recent Lakeman performance featuring Stainton at the Robin 2 Club in Bilston can be found elsewhere on this site.

November has seen the release of Stainton’s fourth album “Word Games”, the title also lending its name to this ongoing tour featuring Stainton fronting a four piece band including her regular rhythm section of bassist Pete Randall and drummer Andy Chapman plus the experienced and versatile guitarist Simon Johnson. The album is a lavishly packaged affair that features an expanded sound palette and includes some of Stainton’s most mature songwriting to date. Lakeman guests extensively adding vocals, viola and bouzouki but he’s just one of an extensive cast list that also includes Randall, Chapman, percussionist Cormac Byrne and tonight’s opening act Eleanor McEvoy.

Stainton’s work combines the intimacy of folk with the immediacy of pop and although outside my usual listening zone she’s become something of a Jazzmann favourite, something which her local connections (her parents now live in Herefordshire) have only encouraged. I first encountered her music in 2011 when she supported Judy Collins at a memorable concert held in the beautiful environs of Worcester Cathedral. Thanks to the generosity of her father and manager Clive Stainton I’ve also seen her perform solo on her “living room” tour and at the Courtyard last year fronting a trio featuring Chapman and guitarist Charlie Wilkinson. Thanks to Clive I’ve also attended two Seth Lakeman shows and been given the opportunity to fully explore Lisbee’s catalogue of recordings. She’s a confident and assured stage performer, a fine singer and a highly accomplished instrumentalist who specialises on her unusual custom made eight string acoustic guitar. 

Last time Lisbee played the Courtyard it was in the smaller “studio” performance space. Tonight she’d made the step up to the main house and attracted a crowd of around two hundred , many of them students at Herefordshire College of Art where Lisbee has just been made an Honorary Fellow. It all made for a highly supportive atmosphere which brought the best out of the performers including opening act Eleanor McEvoy who impressed with her feisty and witty presentation style and evocative and varied songwriting.

I’ll admit to total ignorance here,  but I’d never heard of Eleanor McEvoy before this evening’s performance. However it seems that McEvoy is a pretty big deal back in her native Ireland with the current tour a ploy to increase her UK fan-base. On the evidence of tonight’s performance it seems to be working as she earned an excellent reception from the Hereford audience and sold a respectable number of albums during the break. McEvoy is a professional musician with twenty five years of experience and an impressive and sizeable back catalogue. 

She began her solo set on electric guitar and quickly won the audience over with “Old, New Borrowed and Blue”, a barbed and cynical song about the subject of marriage co-written with Dave Rotheray, once the guitarist of the Beautiful South. The lyrics, clever and caustic, were reminiscent of those of Rotheray’s old band.

From McEvoy’s latest album “If You Leave” came “Land In The Water”, its rousing chorus helping to keep the audience onside. Even more popular was “You’ll hear Better Songs Than This”, a declaration of love written from the point of view of a song writer.

It was interesting to note that McEvoy was not afraid to sing with an Irish accent, rather like her countrymen the Saw Doctors in this regard. However the following blues showed that she can do American styles as well, even she did start sending up the genre by the end.

She switched to violin for “Wrong, So Wrong”, a tale of a doomed attraction that the protagonist knows is wrong but can’t resist. Singing above her own percussive bowing McEvoy’s performance was sometimes reminiscent of Seth Lakeman’s solo voice and violin epics and was equally as effective.

Not all the song titles were announced and next up was a piece that was virtually accapella, the only accompaniment being a couple of full match boxes which McEvoy shook vigorously before hurling them into the crowd at the end of the song.

In a brief support set she left her best known song until last. “Only A Woman’s Heart” was written in 1992 and was effectively the title track of “A Woman’s Heart”, a compilation featuring many of Ireland’s leading female singer and songwriters, among them Mary Black, which became the biggest selling album in the history of the Irish recording industry. Simple and direct and full of emotional honesty the song became an instant classic and still hits the target twenty one years later.
I’m not sure how many members of the Hereford audience had heard the song before but it earned its author the kind of reception normally reserved for headliners and paved the way for brisk album sales during the break.

And so to local heroine Lisbee Stainton who took to the stage with her four piece band and hit the ground running with two favourite songs from earlier albums, “Is Whispering” and “Wrench”. I detected a greater emphasis on rhythmic impetus than previously, a consequence not only of the additional instrumentation but also of Lisbee’s experience with the Seth Lakeman band. Nonetheless Lisbee’s pure but powerful voice rang out clearly even though some of the more subtle lyrical nuances were lost in a full on band context. 

“Girl On An Unmade Bed”, the title track of Lisbee’s second album introduced a pleasing touch of wistfulness, a mood that continued into “Eloise”, the first song to be played from the new album.

On “Go” Lisbee divided the audience in to three groups and the performance finished with an impressive display of mass three part harmony singing . This audience inclusive set piece has been a staple of Lisbee’s live performances since her “Living Room” tour 0f 2011, a series of intimate invitation only gigs mainly played in fans’ houses but most memorably on a Royal Navy submarine stationed at Plymouth. 

Lisbee revealed that she’d learned to play the banjo at the request of Seth Lakeman. She picked up the instrument to perform “Pulse” , a song from the new album and her first piece written on the banjo. It’s an effective “relationship” song that brought out the remarkable clarity of her voice on a piece that also featured Johnson on second vocal.

Also from the new album the playful and poppy “Make Me Stay” was co-written by Stainton and Eleanor McEvoy who returned to the stage to add pizzicato violin and backing vocals. The album also features two collaborative songs written by Lisbee and Seth Lakeman. On one of these, “The Journey”, Stainton sang sans instrument, the guitar part being played by the versatile Johnson who spent the evening switching between electric and acoustic versions of the instrument in addition to occasional excursions on tenor guitar and mandolin. Similarly Randall moved between fretted and fretless bass guitars and acoustic stand up bass.

It was Randall’s rich acoustic bass sound that underpinned “Red”, one of Lisbee’s earliest and most popular songs with its rich horticultural allegories. In tonight’s version Lisbee also took the opportunity to demonstrate her instrumental skills with a brief solo on her eight string guitar. 

A hard driving “We Don’t Believe In Monsters” (from Lisbee’s third album “Go”) represented a rounding of the final bend, this followed by the rousing new single “Red Dog Running”, the opening track of the new album, and the perfect pop of “Never Quite An Angel”, an early single from the “Girl On An Unmade Bed” record. The title track from “Word Games” closed the show with McEvoy again returning to add the sound of her fiddle to the mix.

An excellent show packed with quality songs, assured singing and excellent musicianship all presented with wit and warmth was again enthusiastically received by the Hereford crowd making this another triumphant homecoming for Lisbee Stainton. The inevitable encore began with Lisbee solo, singing the daft but catchy single “Sidekick”, a piece not represented on album. The band plus McEvoy then returned for “Find Me Here” (from “Go”) with Johnson featuring on mandolin. 

This was a typically enjoyable Lisbee show although I was expecting there to be a greater focus on the new album. “Word Games” is quite lavishly produced (by Mikko Gordon and Rupert Christie, who both also play on it) and some of the arrangements, many of which feature strings and keyboards, may be difficult to produce satisfactorily within the confines of a four piece rock band. Nevertheless “Word Games” represents Lisbee’s strongest artistic statement to date and will build and consolidate on the success she has already achieved. No overnight success she’s working her way up the musical career ladder the “old fashioned” way paying her dues by way of confident, high quality performances such as this.

2014 will see Lisbee continuing to collaborate with Lakeman and McEvoy and attempting to make further inroads into the summer festival circuit. This is an artist who’s in it for the long haul, her star will doubtless continue to rise.

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